webconf-submission

Web Conference Submission

The Web Conference splits its abstract and full-paper deadlines by exactly one week

(2026: September 30 and October 7, 2025, AoE, explicitly strict). Several of the

checks below can only be fixed inside that week, and one — the author list — locks

shut at the abstract deadline. Treat every number here as a 2026-edition anchor

and reopen the current research-tracks CFP first.

The three gates, in order of irreversibility

1. Author-list freeze. At the abstract deadline the author list and its ordering

become final: no additions, removals, or reordering afterward, only spelling and

affiliation corrections. Settle authorship disputes before registering the

abstract, not during the review cycle. This is stricter than most ML venues and

catches teams every year.

1. Track declaration. A submission goes to exactly one of the ten research

tracks; the track determines which chairs and reviewer pool see the paper. A graph

learning paper sent to "Web mining and content analysis" instead of "Graph

algorithms and modeling for the Web" gets reviewers who ask different questions.

If the track is contested inside the team, run webconf-topic-selection first.

1. The 7-submission cap. No author may appear on more than seven research-tracks

submissions cumulatively. Count every draft your name is on across all

collaborations now — a cap violation discovered at the deadline forces someone

to withdraw something.

Page arithmetic (2026 rule)

One PDF, three zones, hard total:

| Zone | Limit | Reviewer obligation |

|---|---|---|

| Main paper | 8 pages | Read fully |

| References | no separate cap | Consulted as needed |

| Optional appendix (proofs, pseudo-code, reproducibility) | fills remainder | Not required to read |

| Whole PDF | 12 pages total | — |

The binding constraint most teams miss: references and appendix share the

remaining 4 pages. A 2.5-page bibliography — common in survey-adjacent web papers —

leaves only 1.5 pages of appendix. And because reviewers may stop at page 8, any

result, ablation, or ethics statement that carries a claim must live in the main

paper. The appendix is for verification, not persuasion.

Format and anonymity

% WWW 2026 research-tracks setting (reconfirm against the current CFP)
\documentclass[sigconf, anonymous, review]{acmart}
% sigconf   -> ACM two-column proceedings layout
% anonymous -> suppresses the author block for double-blind review
% review    -> line numbers for reviewer reference
% Word authors: the ACM "Interim Template" was accepted in 2026.

• Strip acknowledgements, grant numbers, and identifying self-citations ("our prior

system [12]" where [12] names your platform); refer to your own published work in

the third person.

• Preprint tolerance is specific: an anonymized copy on arXiv or SSRN may exist,

but the submission must not cite it. Do not tweet the preprint under the paper

title during review.

• Web papers leak identity through data: an internal dataset name, a crawler

user-agent string in the appendix, or a screenshot showing a logged-in session can

each de-anonymize. Sweep figures and dataset descriptions, not just the header.

EasyChair profile gate

The 2026 research tracks ran on EasyChair (a switch from the OpenReview groups of

2024-2025), and required an up-to-date profile — current and past institutional

affiliations plus conflict information — for every listed author. Because the

author list freezes at the abstract deadline, incomplete co-author profiles and

authorship questions must both be resolved in the same pre-abstract sweep. Confirm

which platform the current edition uses before sending co-authors instructions.

Failure-severity ledger

| Failure | When it becomes unfixable | Typical outcome |

|---|---|---|

| Wrong author list | Abstract deadline | Live with it or withdraw |

| Over 12 total pages / over 8 main pages | Paper deadline | Desk-level rejection risk |

| Identity leak (text, figures, data names) | Paper deadline | Desk-level rejection risk |

| Track mismatch | Paper deadline | Hostile or confused reviews |

| Key evidence only in appendix | Paper deadline | Reviewers may never see it |

| 8th submission under one name | Abstract deadline | Forced withdrawal |

| Missing co-author EasyChair profile | Abstract deadline | Submission blocked |

Deadline-week runbook

1. Day 7 (abstract day): register title, abstract, track, and the final author list;

verify all profiles; recount the per-author submission tally.

1. Day 5: rebuild the PDF from a clean acmart checkout; check page zones; confirm

nothing claim-bearing sits past page 8.

1. Day 3: anonymity sweep — text, references, figures, dataset names, PDF metadata,

any linked repository.

1. Day 1: upload with hours of margin. The 2026 CFP said no extensions, and the

venue's history backs that up.

Vignette: the abstract-week authorship dispute

A four-person team plans to add a fifth author "if their experiments make it in."

At most venues this is safe procrastination; here it is a trap. The experiments

land on October 3 — three days after the abstract deadline froze the list. The

options are now all bad: publish without credit, withdraw and lose the cycle, or

ask chairs for an exception the CFP explicitly rules out. The audit lesson: at

T-2 weeks, force the question "who could conceivably deserve authorship by

camera-ready?" and register the inclusive list — trimming never becomes necessary

(contribution statements can scope credit), but adding becomes impossible.

Cross-lane edge cases

• Downgrading to a short paper after the research deadline is a rewrite into a

different call (4 pages including references in 2026, November deadlines), not

a resubmission — the abstract registered in September does not carry over.

• A paper rejected from the research tracks cannot slide into Web4Good in the

same cycle; the 2026 Web4Good deadline (November 30) passed before research

notifications (January 13).

• Industry-track double-dipping is a different-platform trap: the 2026 research

tracks ran on EasyChair while Industry ran on OpenReview, and the originality

rule bars the same work from both regardless.

• The 7-submission cap counts submissions, not acceptances — a withdrawal

after the paper deadline still consumed a slot during the window that mattered.

Output format

[WebConf readiness] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Track] <one of the current research tracks> (source: current CFP)
[Page zones] main=<n>/8, total=<n>/12, claim-bearing content past p.8: yes/no
[Author gates] list frozen OK / at risk; per-author cap: OK / violated
[Anonymity] text / figures / data names / metadata: pass or fail each
[Fix order] <ordered actions before the AoE deadline>